Supporting Literacy and Writing in Lessons and Assessments

Chapter 5: Planning Instruction for Content Literacy and Chapter 10: Writing for Tests and Assessments

No matter what your content area is, you will need to create strong lessons.  A good lesson that supports literacy will increase knowledge, literacy skills, and will help students develop skills and strategies for later in their life and academic career.  Using writing as an alternate form of assessment not only teaches students writing skills, but gives an opportunity to think in a new way and allows creates a more inclusive classroom by addressing different learning styles.

Chapter 5 of Content Area Reading gives a multitude of strategies and examples for planning lessons and units that surround texts.  It is important when planning a lesson or unit that uses texts to provide plenty of support to the students - that means making sure texts are scaffolded before, explored during, and analyzed after.  If this sounds familiar, it is because this is the framework for B-D-A instruction, which I went in to more detail about in an earlier posting (click here for a refresher).  B-D-A instruction is a comprehensive way to approach a text during a unit; it allows students to become interested in the text, be well-supported throughout the reading, and extract more knowledge overall.  Along with using a B-D-A framework to make sure your lesson is well-rounded; setting clear objectives, picking excellent texts, and providing resources will greatly increase the lesson or unit is effective.

In addition to all those strategies, providing opportunities for collaborative learning will also increase success.  Cooperative learning "foster[s] collaboration in a classroom context, develop[s] students' self-esteem in the process of learning, encourage[s] development of positive group relationships, and enhance[s] academic achievement" (Mraz, Vacca & Vacca, 2011, p. 152).  This is important because it allows to develop social and group skills, as well as gives them the opportunity to negotiate and try out ideas in a smaller, lower risk environment.  This is great in an English classroom because some of the intricacies of literature can only be discovered and fleshed out through discussion.  I would like to use this as much as possible so students can develop ideas, both as a group and independently, and learn to support them.

Chapter 10 of Content-Area Writing discusses the use of writing as a mode of assessment - a topic that is essential to my language arts content area, since I really want to focus on my students' writing.  When using writing as an assessment, it is important to make sure students are given clear expectations and plenty of time and support.  It is helpful to use writing assessments as a "double" learning opportunity: the students learn from writing the paper (or whatever the assignment), then students self- or peer-critique the writing to discover what his or her strengths are and what he or she could do better next time - perhaps even another writing assignment reflecting on the first one.  Providing plenty of encouragement and support should make students (more or less) want to write, rather than check-out because they are not confident in their writing skills.  While assigning writing, teachers must ask themselves if they are valuing syntax or if what really matters is the content they touch on in their writing.  Assigning more "casual" writing assignments gives students a chance to practice the act of writing and explore content without having to worry so much about little writing rules.